PHOTO GALLERIES Tragedy and recovery: 1977 flood 45th anniversary brings survivor stories, thoughts on the future

Jul. 16—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — On the night of July 19, 1977, Susan Burns and her mother were were stopped on Cooper Avenue by emergency crews as they headed home to Tanneryville after "Bingo Night."

Told they could not get into Tanneryville because of floodwaters, they were sent to a nearby gas station where a neighborhood family agreed to take them in for the night.

In an interview for Johnstown Area Heritage Association's oral history project on the 1977 Johnstown Flood, Burns said it was two days before she learned the fate of family members in the Tanneryville home.

"They told me they found my husband and father-in-law near the wire mill, and they found my daughter at East Seward," Burns told Conrad Suppes, who conducted the interviews five years ago for JAHA as his Eagle Scout project.

Looking back on the latest of Johnstown's three major floods, firsthand stories in the oral history project provide unique perspectives.

The flood was the result of several severe thunderstorms overnight from July 19-20, dropping as much as a foot of rain in some areas.

"These storms took nearly identical tracks as they crossed Cambria County," the National Weather Service website explains. "Thus, the same areas received rainfall from multiple thunderstorms. This phenomenon is known as 'training' — as the storms follow each other like train cars on a track."

Solomon's Run, Sam's Run, Peggy's Run and other small streams became raging torrents — smashing homes, businesses and roadways on their way to the overflowing Conemaugh and Stonycreek rivers. Property damage reached $300 million and 85 people died.

So many autopsies ...

Burns' family members were among 40 the flood claimed in the Tanneryville neighborhood when the Laurel Run Reservoir Dam and several others failed, sending a deluge of floodwaters that flattened homes.

Suppes also interviewed pathologist Dr. Sydney Goldblatt before he died in January this year. Goldblatt was Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center's lab director and chief pathologist in 1977.

Like many in the hilltop suburbs, as he headed to the hospital that day, Goldblatt only knew there was a heavy rainstorm and power had been out all night. As he approached Conemaugh hospital from Southmont, authorities stopped him and told him the roads below were closed because of the flood. He explained who he was and was allowed to proceed to the hospital.

"What I was greeted with when I got to the hospital was that I had about five bodies in the morgue — people who were killed in the flood," Goldblatt recalled in his interview. "I had one body impaled on a tree.

"In the course of the next week, I did more than 70 autopsies on people who were killed in the flood. I got some bodies a month later."

Most of Goldblatt's work took place in a temporary morgue set up in Richland High School's parking lot.

With a flood as sudden and violent as the 1977 Johnstown Flood, Goldblatt said it was sometimes a challenge determining the cause of death.

Using the tree-impaled victim as an an example, he explained, "Death may not have been caused by drowning; death may have been caused by trauma."

Muddy recovery

There was also a challenge of identifying victims who were swept far from their homes or other locations.

Cambria City neighborhood resident Susan Brett was among neighbors who made a grisly discovery while assessing damage on Power Street near the city garage.

"My dad uncovered this person," Brett said. "This was a man who had floated the whole way from Hornerstown. He and two little boys were killed in the flood."

Brett said she had spent the night of the flood on the second floor of her family's Chestnut Street home while waters filled the basement, rising 3 feet into the first floor. The family spent weeks cleaning and repairing the damage. They were at home cleaning when the first offer of assistance arrived.

"Someone came to our door and said, 'They are feeding people down at St. Rochus. Go down and get something to eat,'" she said.

The emergency feeding center set up by the Rev. Stephen Slavik and St. Rochus Roman Catholic Church parishioners quickly grew into a flood relief station, with showers, cleaning supplies and more, Brett said.

The cleaning continued for weeks.

Brett said the home's basement had no outside entrance, so all the mud had to be shoveled out through windows that were 6 feet above the floor. Mud was pervasive throughout the house, she said. Years later, the family would move a cabinet or other furniture and discover "flood mud" under or behind the piece.

"I would say, if it ever would happen again, I would close the door behind me and walk away because I would never want to deal with that again," Brett said.

The 1977 Flood changed the face of Johnstown forever. JAHA's website says, "Many downtown firms damaged by the flood did not reopen or moved to the suburbs. Employment at Bethlehem Steel dropped by 4,000. Between 1970 and 1980, the city's population dropped from 42,221 to 34,221, a 19.4% decline, and the 1977 flood is a major reason why."

But in a statement provided to The Tribune-Democrat, JAHA President and CEO Richard Burkert says more research is shifting blame for the downturn on other factors as well.

The demise of Bethlehem Steel was part of the overall decline in American steel, Burkert wrote, citing Patrick Farabaugh's 2021 book, "Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown."

"Farabaugh argues that the unanticipated disaster was not the cause of the rapid downward spiral of Johnstown's steel industry," Burkert wrote. "Rather than being caused by the 1977 flood, Farabaugh cites the causes of the industrial decline and failure as including mismanagement, international competition, reluctance to invest in capital improvements and unsustainable wages and work rules."

The decline of the downtown also has root causes that were hastened by the flood, he said.

"With the development of better highways and the exodus of residents from the historic neighborhoods of the city and the upper stories of downtown buildings to the new suburbs, key commercial anchors pulled out of the downtown in favor of locations in the new strip malls and (after 1974) the Richland Mall," Burkert said. "The 1977 flood only accelerated that trend."

Burkert also commended Visit Johnstown and other local groups for working to change the city's image.

"The exodus of stores and people was part of a national trend, as is the current interest in revitalizing Downtown as a real place that offers dining and entertainment," he wrote. "For more than 130 years, we have been known as the Flood City.

"One hopes that our community can go beyond its floods to become better known as a desirable and interesting place to visit, work and live."